A lot of cool stuff has happened in the track and field world since the Olympics. Mondo Duplantis broke his own world record in the pole vault. Josh Kerr and Karissa Schweizer rode their Olympic fitness to Fifth Avenue Mile wins. Mary Moraa set a world best over 600 meters and Emmanuel Wanyonyi got even closer to David Rudisha’s 800m world record. But when it came to the Diamond League final at the Memorial Van Damme meet in Brussels, Belgium… it was a bit of a snoozefest, to be honest.

Maybe it was the cool temperatures slowing down the winning sprint times. It certainly didn’t help that a lot of Olympic champs skipped the meet entirely. And the biggest self-inflicted wound of all was relegating Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone to the B races to adhere to the letter of the law in the DL rulebook. But the net effect was that, five weeks after the last medals were handed out in Paris, the professional track season went out with something closer to a whimper than a bang. An event that should’ve been an exciting opportunity to re-engage track casuals with a reminder that their favorite champions are still fit and still racing instead felt like an awkwardly-situated footnote.

Don’t get us wrong – there were some really cool highlights. Kenny Bednarek finally taking down Letsile Tebogo over 200m, Beatrice Chebet clocking her second 14:09 in two weeks, and the return of Femke Bol were all thrilling moments. And last year’s incredible showcase at the Prefontaine Classic showed that the DL final can be one of the best track meets of the year. But it’s just as apparent that, while Brussels featured all the right ingredients, it takes the right recipe and preparation to cook up a truly delicious meal.

If they put The Lap Count in charge of next year’s Diamond League final (which they certainly won’t), here are a few common-sense changes we’d implement:

Time the final just right.

In a perfectly-structured track and field schedule, the season ends with the biggest championship. There’s a reason they don’t keep playing baseball games after the World Series. Six Diamond League events following the Olympics is, quite frankly, at least five too many. The good news is that, next year, the Diamond League final precedes Worlds; the bad news is that the biggest stars may very well skip the meet to focus on the big kahuna. The DL final does offer something championship races don’t: the ability to optimize conditions, fields, and pacers to translate championship fitness into blazing-fast times. If the DL final wants to maximize impact irrespective of Worlds, it should aim to take place around two weeks after the end of a global championship, so athletes have the chance to rest and reset but don’t have to restructure their whole training cycle around a double peak.

Similarly, DL organizers should be realistic about where and when fast times come easy. Temperatures in the 50s aren’t unusual for a September evening in Belgium – so why are we asking sprinters to circle a meet on the calendar that’s statistically unlikely to produce their best results? There are undoubtedly many considerations league organizers have to balance in designing the Diamond League schedule, but for the final, the greatest emphasis should be on picking a fast track during a period of great weather.

Incentivize fun over formality.

Last week’s Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone drama exposed some key flaws in the Diamond League system. In an effort to incentivize yearlong participation in the circuit, athletes must earn a spot in the final via points accumulated in regular season competition – which makes sense, right? You don’t want to create a scenario where the best athletes can skip out on appearances then show up and take all the money… unless, of course, your goal is for the last meet to have the biggest names and be the most exciting. You see the struggle here.

Similarly, the two dangled prize carrots – a $30,000 first prize and a wildcard entry into Worlds in two weeks – may incentivize the top athletes to show up, but also act as a deterrent to risk-taking. With the DL final leading into Worlds next year, it’s unlikely any major contenders would need to secure a bye – particularly if doing so would mean burning off a hard effort. In short, league rules are well-structured to create high-quality races all season long, but not necessarily fireworks in its finale. But if the final is to truly be an added draw for potential viewers, it might be worth bending the existing rules to create fun storylines.

One way to mix things up would be to pilot the possibility of allowing qualified athletes to float across different events, should they choose. If Letsile Tebogo qualified for the 200m final but wants to run the 400m, let him! This will inevitably piss off the first man out of the 400m final but creates an interesting narrative for everyone else. It would’ve been much more fun to see a rematch between Beatrice Chebet and Faith Kipyegon, the 5000m gold and silver medalists from Paris, than to watch them win their respective events by huge margins.

And then there’s the possibility of a “Sydney rule” – letting a World/Olympic champ who hasn’t run on the circuit all season into the final in an event of their choosing. It could reinforce the existing pattern of the biggest stars skipping out on much of the regular season, but they’re doing that already. At this point, we’d rather bend the rules for a special few than force them into a qualification straightjacket they’ll inevitably find a way to wriggle out of. Here, it’s important to recognize that the Diamond League is not World Athletics: its goal is to maximize the impact (and revenue) from its suite of meets, not to grow the sport as a whole. And as it currently stands, the DL needs stars more than stars need the DL.